This message was sent to faculty from Mary J. Osirim, Provost and Professor of Sociology, and Gina M. Siesing, Chief Information Officer & Constance A. Jones Director of Libraries, on Thurrsday, April 23, 2020.
Dear Colleagues,
We hope this message finds you and those close to you doing well and staying healthy. We are writing to introduce a new initiative that LITS is developing with faculty contributors to enable you to move beyond the emergency approach to remote teaching that you engaged in this term. LITS is creating a set of institutes for faculty interested in designing effective learning experiences for online environments. The goal of these institutes is to support faculty moving together through the design of thoughtful, well‐supported online learning experiences in case the College needs to be online or partially online for any part of the new academic year.
The first Online Teaching Institute will take place in mid‐May and will be focused on supporting GSSWSR and Postbac faculty as these programs move into online teaching of summer courses.
For the following institutes–which will take place over the summer–LITS is especially interested in building upon the online teaching approaches you developed this spring, as well as facilitating the chance for others to learn from your knowledge of best practices and tools within your disciplines. To some extent, this can begin with the list of suggestions that you offered to the Provost’s Office this spring. LITS encourages faculty to reach out with expressions of interest in the institutes, or in contributing to the institute’s design by sharing knowledge about specific disciplinary challenges and practices.
LITS will be following up next week with additional information about these summer institute opportunities, including registration information and a further invitation to contribute to the design process so that the programs best meet faculty needs as we plan flexibly for many potential fall and spring models.
Thank you very much for your time and attention in this matter. We look forward to your participation in the summer institutes.
With our best wishes,
Mary J. Osirim
Provost and Professor of Sociology
Gina M. Siesing, Ph.D.
Chief Information Officer & Constance A. Jones Director of Libraries